Ali Safa pulls the desk chair over in front of the bed. Father sits in front of him on the bed letting his legs hang down. Ali Safa sets his glasses in the corner of the room. He shakes his head in amazement. He starts to say something, but then remains quiet.
After a while, he says: “Have you heard about the king’s latest scandal? He had the hots for an officer’s wife. He told his commanding officer to assign him to barracks duty. The officer smelled a rat, so he snuck out and went back home and found his wife in bed with the king. The king raised his pistol and blew him away. The next day, he granted the victim’s father the status of Pasha. Who knows how much longer the people will put up with this?” Father says: “And what exactly are the people supposed to do? Leave it to God.” Ali Safa asks himself: “I wonder who the Muslim Brothers are planning to assassinate now that they’ve done the secretary for the appeals court.”
I struggle to stay awake. His voice begins to slip away. He seems to be talking now in a whisper. I listen carefully: “. . she’s sixteen years old. Her father died and she lives with her mother by herself. They were standing on the stairs in front of our building haggling with the woman who sells butter. Her mother played shy and hid behind a doorway. The girl just stood there. She was wearing a nightshirt that showed lots of cleavage. She had put on a thin line of lipstick. That was the first time I realized that she had grown up. I’d always passed her on the stairway without even noticing her. When she bent over to get the basket of butter, I saw her tits. Pray on the prophet! I pretended I was thinking of buying some. I asked how much it cost. She gave me this shy smile, and I noticed that she was rubbing her lips together, maybe thinking it would make them redder.”
Father lights his cigarette and comments: “Girls grow up fast.” Ali Safa goes on: “After a few days, I heard her crying out in pain. I knocked on their door. She was limping as she opened for me and she said: ‘It’s my knee, uncle.’ ” Father broke in, laughing: “ ‘It’s my knee, uncle.’ ”
Ali Safa continues: “ ‘What’s wrong with your knee, sweetheart?’ She says that she hit it accidentally. I asked: ‘Are you alone?’ She answers: ‘Mama left.’ So I said: ‘Show me. Where exactly?’ She rested her leg on a chair and pulled up her nightshirt all the way to her knee. Magnificent grace of the Almighty! Don’t talk to me about alabaster. Plump and round and shaped like a sculpture! I wanted to bend over and put my lips on it right then and there. I told her: ‘Massage it and it’ll get better. . or come to think of it, you could rub it with a balm.’ I left her standing with her leg on the chair and I went back in to get some of the balm for rheumatism that I rub on my joints. I gave her the tube and told her to rub it on. I was hoping she’d ask me to rub it for her, but instead she put her leg down, took the tube from me, and said: ‘Thanks, uncle.’ ”
As soon as I feel father suddenly turning towards me, I close my eyes. I prick up my ears: “A week later, I was riding the tram. I saw her heading home from school. The tram was crowded. She came close to me, and I stopped her right in front of me. I got a raging hard-on.” Father comments: “What luck!” Ali Safa says: “She has to have felt it.”
I cough once and then sink into a coughing fit. Father helps me sit up. He leaves the room for a second then comes back with a cup of water. I take a drink. He brings over the bottle of Belmonks with a small spoon. He fills it and brings it close to my mouth. I take a sip grudgingly. He tells me to wait a minute before I lie down again.
Ali Safa says: “Have you heard the latest Dr. Ibrahim Nagy story? He was walking down the street. He saw a high-class man. He thought it was one of his old patients. He said to him: ‘Hello. What’s with the long absence? You haven’t come around for a while, Muhammad Bey. Your health seems much better, praise God. But you look a bit different. You’re fatter and you have a tan now.’ The man said: ‘But I’m not Muhammad Bey.’ Ibrahim Nagy comes right back at him: ‘My God! You mean you even changed your name, Muhammad Bey?’ ”
I lie down and father pulls the covers around me. I turn over and lie on my left side. I close my eyes pretending to sleep. I open them after a minute. Father raises up his legs and sits cross-legged on the bed.
Ali Safa starts telling the story of the Deir Yassin massacre in Palestine. The Zionist forces came in driving an armored car with a loudspeaker on its roof and demanded that the residents come out of their houses if they wanted to save themselves. Some of them believed what was said. They came out of their houses and were mowed down by machine-guns. After that, they threw bombs into the houses where there were women, children, and old people hiding and they killed them all, to the last one.
He got up, shuffled his feet, and said: “It’s stuffy. Let’s open the balcony doors.” Father says: “I’m afraid of the cool breeze on the boy.”
Ali Safa sits down and starts talking again in a low voice: “Ever since that day on the tram I can’t get her out of my mind. I imagine that she’s by herself and knocks on my door at night. She says that she’s afraid. She’s heard the sound of a burglar. . or she has seen a mouse. . whatever. I invite her to spend the night at our place with my daughters. I make them a bed on the floor, and I sleep next to them to reassure them. She falls asleep. Maybe she throws an arm across me like she’s used to doing with her mother. She turns over and lies with her back to me. If it’s hot, she throws off the cover, and if it’s cold, even better. I turn over and press my chest to her back. She clings to me, and I’m as hard as iron. She starts to move and I move behind her. My heart pounds. Could she be awake? Could she be sensing what’s going on? She must! Maybe she imagines she’s dreaming. Her knickers are wet and she’s panting. She falls asleep. All of this is in my daydream, of course.”
He falls silent. His voice rises again after a second: “I can’t get her out of my mind. I thought about asking for her hand from her mother. What do you think, Oh wise one?”
“What would your daughters say?”
“What business is it of theirs? Soon, they’ll marry and leave me all alone.”
“Are you going to have more kids?”
“Look who’s talking?”
Father turns to me and I close my eyes. He says: “The first time I wasn’t paying attention.”
“What about the second time?”
“The condom broke.”
Ali Safa laughs in a loud voice. He stops all of a sudden. He says: “God rest her soul.” I turn over on to my back. Father says to him: “Her death left a huge mark on Rowhaya.”
“How old was she when you married her?”
“Rowhaya? She was sixteen too.”
Ali Safa says in a triumphant tone: “See?”
I open my eyes as wide as I can. Father answers in a muffled voice: “I loved her.” The lamp of the living room shines over the table top. It’s messier than usual. Smell of sautéed liver. Olives. Pistachios. A small bottle with a clear liquid. Her voice comes from the bedroom. She’s singing the Ismahan song over and over: “When will you know it’s true? That I love only you.” Laughter. Her voice again to a different beat: “Darling, don’t let me be. See what’s happening to me.” My father’s voice finishes the song: “Loving you is destroying me!”
“How did you meet her?”